Variables – Digestion

"Eyaaaaaaaaaugh!" Anemone shrieked, twisting and tearing against the already-contorted sheets. Dominic gripped her wrists, attempting to hold her down, restrain her from shattering her shoulders on the hard metal frame. This was familiar to him, to both of them, and yet so much more terrifying than it had been before. The world had changed, as had they, so why was Anemone back to the chaotic mess she had been before. Did any of it really happen? Dominic wondered before turning his attention back to his sobbing charge.

"Why is this happening to me what is it Dominic make it stop please! Why…whywhywhywhywhywhyWHY?!" Bluish veins roped her bony arms and legs, twisting beneath her ivory skin like pulsing bonds. Dominic shuddered to look at them but held tight to her nonetheless. Back arched, Anemone clawed at the sweat-soaked fabric, her eyes wild and wandering across the ceiling. It wasn't white anymore, was it? It is it isn't, wasn't, shouldn't be but it is it is. Iridescent swirls and clouds of fog filling up the corners and thousands of eyes observing her every seizing movement. The crackle of the intercom seemed far away and simultaneously, suddenly too loud. The words spoken to her human tether were foreign and buzzed slightly in her ears. In our ears.

The bed was trying to swallow her. It was no longer a bed. It was an endless shifting plane of white and otherworldly colors. It had tasted her, analyzed and wanted to know more. Did she not want to know? Do you? Don't you? Her hair was long and shimmered faintly, a coral. Who am I? Who are we? No, now it was short. The few tendrils that caught in her lashes and sliced her vision into frames were a pale tint of green. The kind in trees that grew along the edges of our reach, just before we devour them to feed our knowledge to know. The color of new life, of rebirth, now coral again. Coralian? What was she? How strange…

-

Finally, she rested. Dominic plucked at the bunched fabric of his sleeves, watching Anemone's frail chest rise and fall slowly. Her hair clung to the perspiration of her forehead. Occasionally she would inhale sharply, the bruised skin around her eyes crinkling in pain. He would rise, prepared to take up his station again, only for her to sigh and go limp once again. Slices of light snuck underneath the blinds and splashed across the bed, mapping the countless wrinkles and folds of the sheets.

The intercom link blinked twice, indicating the concern of the crew for their troubled patient. Dominic ignored it. Holland had been in a moment ago, shortly after the fits had passed. He'd stared at Anemone for a while, as if he was trying to find familiarity in her features. Dominic had said nothing to him, merely looked on at the strange scene playing out in the darkened quarters. The captain had sat, tensed and tired-looking, in the same place Dominic had waited for Anemone's violent thrashing to cease. For a moment, Holland seemed about to touch her, but he recoiled and stood silently to leave. Standing in the doorway, he had turned back to Dominic and straightened.

"I don't know what will happen next," he said, "but you'd damn well better be there with her when it does." Tapping his foot twice on the doorframe, he'd left, leaving Dominic to sit in the dark and wonder and worry. "What will happen next?" he mused. For a moment he wondered if Renton would know, but the boy refused to see anyone. During one of their visits to the Gekko-Go, Dominic and Anemone had passed him in the hangar, gazing forlornly at the Nirvash. His eyes were empty, seeing not what rested in front of him but what was no longer there.

Anemone groaned and shifted. Standing sharply, Dominic approached the bed. She lay awake, her eyes staring at the ceiling, not even registering his presence. Dominic briefly wondered whether she was still asleep, her body reacting to some strange dream. Her eyes, however, flickered at the movement of his hand on her arm. Turning her head slowly to face him, she blinked.

"Who are you?" she asked. Dominic, taken aback by the question and the blank apathy on her face, stuttered for a moment.

"Ah…Anemone, it's me."

"Anemone?" she replied softly. One white hand floated off the bed and hovered above her face. Each finger bent and straightened experimentally.

"No, no, I'm Dominic. Y-you're Anemone," Dominic said, confusion furrowing his brow. His hand tightened around her arm. Anemone, still looking at her hand, touched her fingers to her palm.

"Am I? How strange."